


Smartest Person in the Room

by notyouranswer (gorgeouschaos)



Series: Seared with Scars [3]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, One Shot, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:48:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24149992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gorgeouschaos/pseuds/notyouranswer
Summary: Here’s the thing about being the smartest person in every room you walk into: it’s like being the only person in the room.Spencer Reid is intimately familiar with that fact.
Series: Seared with Scars [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1739086
Comments: 2
Kudos: 67





	Smartest Person in the Room

**Author's Note:**

> I probably should have focused more on Reid identifying with that shooter in Elephant’s Memory, but I didn’t want to, because I didn’t want to talk about school shooters. So. I also left out that one friend Reid had because that didn't make sense to me.  
> Written because I'm legally obligated to write multiple character studies for every fandom I enter while procrastinating everything else.  
> Thanks for reading, hope you like it, and I love hearing from y'all.

Reid is four, six, eight, ten, and every class he’s in is boring. They try to teach him the alphabet and he’s been reading novels since he was four. They try to teach him addition and he’s been teaching himself exponents for months. They try to teach him sanitized American history and he read biographies of every president in chronological order a year before. 

His father leaves the day after Reid is moved from fifth to seventh grade.

Reid is ten, twelve, fourteen, and he’s still the smartest person in every room he walks into but everyone else is just so much bigger, stronger, faster, and it doesn’t matter how smart he is, he still can’t stop them in any way that matters. 

He spends every spare second he has-- between classes that bore him and his mother’s episodes, it's not as much as he'd like, but it's enough-- in the library. Reid devours every book he can get his hand on, averages five books a day, and he tells himself it erases the burning shame of not being strong enough.

He skips tenth and eleventh grade, graduates with every honor there is when he’s thirteen, and his mother says she’s proud of him when her longest episode yet comes to an end.

Reid is fourteen, sixteen, eighteen, and he double majors in two and a half years, gets one Ph.D. while he earns his third bachelor’s. He’s still the smartest person in every one of his classes but most of his professors know more than he does. He doesn’t get distracted like his classmates do, doesn’t drink or work or date because it’s all so _boring_ , and by the time he’s eighteen he’s got five agencies and a dozen corporations knocking down the door. 

Reid gets another two PhDs just because he can, just because he gets bored, just because he’s still so goddamn _smart_ and he’s still searching for someone who’s even his equal.

Reid is twenty-two and he lets the FBI recruit him. He’s too young, but they don’t care, and it’s a relief not to be judged for his age just this once. He makes most of his points in the physical tests on the two runs. He’s never been able to gain much muscle, but he’s always been a runner. 

At Quantico, he’s still the smartest person in the room, but there are things he can’t learn anywhere else and people who actually deserve his respect and he’s not bored in class for the first time in a very long time.

Reid walks into Jason Gideon’s classroom on his twenty-third birthday. Gideon walks in five minutes late with no explanation. He starts talking and Reid thinks, 

_oh_.

And for the first time in his life, Reid knows he’s not the smartest person in the room.


End file.
